Guy Laliberté’s Effort to Save the Planet One Drop at a Time

This last September Guy Laliberté, the Founder of Cirque du Soleil, blasted off to the International Space Station (ISS) to bring awareness and instill action around one clear purpose: to raise humanity’s awareness of water-related issues.

Broadcasting live from the ISS, Laliberté said, “I am an artist not a scientist, but water has touched me and inspired me. Water is a source of life. A child dies every eight seconds because of contaminated water and I knew it was urgent to act.”

For these reasons, he created the One Drop Foundation to fight poverty by providing access to water and raising awareness among individuals and communities about the need for mobilization in order to make safe water accessible to all.

Moving Stars and Earth for Water - A Poetic Social Mission

Bringing artistic representations of the importance of water from 14 global cities on five continents in an exquisitely collaborative way was the goal. Forty-five celebrity activists, including Al Gore, Peter Gabriel, U2, Salma Hayek, Shakira, Matthew McConaughey and Garou read poetry, sang, danced, and shared the facts. On October 9, Laliberté told the audience that water is the, “Basis of most social problems and at the heart of many humanitarian crises that face human kind – health, education, environment and poverty.”

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore presented the basic facts. He addressed the linkage between the water crisis and the climate crisis and how it threatens the future of life on Earth. He talked about how global warming and pollution play a role in the rapid evaporation of water from our oceans. He talked about the eco-infrastructure and how the snow packs are deteriorating. “In order to solve the climate crisis and in order to save the beauty and the habitability of our planet so that we will have fresh drinking water for people and the water we need for agriculture, we have to have a worldwide effort to solve the climate crisis,” Gore said.

During the show, world renowned professor, scientist, and environmentalist, David Suzuki reminded viewers that water is, “The key connector between all forms of life on earth - past, present, and future.” He reminded us that with so little of such a precious resource, “You think we would use it wisely. Unfortunately this is not the case. We are depleting water resources rapidly.

Imagine water for all, imagine children swimming in clean water around the world and imagine a celebration of this blue planet!”

Traveling the globe and space, the webcast visited South Africa, where Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai continued the story. The Mission circled the globe touching people in Rio de Janeiro, Paris, Mexico City, New York, Sydney, London, Marrakesh, Mumbai, Osaka, Santa Monica, Tampa, and Moscow. As part of the U2 concert in Tampa, Bono introduced Laliberté by saying, “He’s on a mission to talk about how precious water is on the planet.”
Perhaps it’s time for us to pause and reflect, perhaps it’s time for us to change, and perhaps it is time to imagine another way.

Yann Martel, acclaimed Canadian novelist, was contracted by Laliberté to create an original poetic work, where a drop of water would serve as the main character. It would unfold in installments throughout the broadcast touching regional issues along the way. For example, in South Africa, the poem touched on the importance of education and water, while in Japan it addressed the melting of the ice caps because as an island, the rising oceans are of concern.

Throughout the broadcast, Cirque du Soleil performers from all over the world were featured. The production costs were an estimated $6 - $10 million on top of the $35 million he personally paid to get to the ISS.

For Laliberté it was a way to incorporate the expertise of Cirque du Soleil with the trip to the ISS. It was a way of using the moment to make something bigger - not just something personal. “Through art, I want to draw people’s attention to environmental issues, to raise humanity’s awareness,” he said.

One Drop’s Global Efforts

Because water is the main cause of death globally, the ONE DROP Foundation is mobilizing people all over the globe to find sustainable solutions to water access problems and to adopt better usage practices for the scarce resource. It is an effort to provide water to over a billion people who do not have access to water in sufficient quantity or quality. It is a global solidarity effort around water.

Water access issues are at the core of many human rights and community issues. Poverty exacerbates the problem. Poverty heightens water access problems, which in turn drive poverty issues deeper. In most cases, the poor pay up to 10X more for water than the wealthy. Average daily water use is also affected. For example, in Mozambique the average citizen uses only 10 liters of water per day, while the average U.S. citizen consumes 575 liters per day – over half on basic sanitation and hygiene activities.

It is a fact that 80% of illnesses in developing countries are water related. These illnesses further push families into poverty because they cannot attend school or work. Gender roles are also affected by water access. It is often the role of women and girls to collect water for their families, thereby preventing them from formal education in their country. By simply adding water pumps closer to homes, it increases collection and efficiency and allows females access to education. And, these efficiencies can add up to $100 USD per year to the family budget.

Another issue is over-consumption.

Over the last 100 years, the world’s population has tripled while water use has increased sevenfold.

Agriculture consumes 70% of the world water use, while industry consumes 20%, and households consume 10%.

Using a tripod approach, ONE DROP focuses primarily on young people and women by raising awareness, education and mobilizing people through art and culture; improving access to water while promoting responsible water management techniques; and by providing microcredit loans.

Technical projects, supported by ONE DROP, provide water access, food security, and promote gender equality in developing communities. Performance is measured by number of lives saved, number of girls that go to school, number of people living in dignity, and the number of protected ecosystems. Take ONE DROPs work in the Estelí region of Nicaragua. Infrequent and irregular rain has contributed to very limited access to safe drinking water. Regional policies, especially deforestation, have resulted in few infrastructures to collect rainwater and have contributed to low groundwater retention and increased vulnerability to natural disasters, such as hurricanes. ONE DROP, in partnership with local water partners, will directly impact the lives of over 1,200 families by improving access to safe water, ensuring food security, supporting personal efforts at equality and awareness in Estelí. Or, in the dry tropics near the Guacirope River basin of Honduras, ONE DROP is on the ground, supporting local partners and their efforts to directly impact 1,000 families and over 15,000 men, women and children. Going forward, ONE DROP has planned projects in Central America, Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, and Southeast Asia.

ONE DROP is funded by a $100 million contribution from Laliberté that spans the next 25 years, as well as from donations from Cirque du Soleil’s 4,000 employees and from the public. Other funding commitments have come from Canadian and international partners including Oxfam, the RBC Foundation, and the Fondation Prince Albert II de Monaco.

How You Can Play a Role

There are many things you can do to. Here are just a few...

* Get the names of local organizations that work toward protecting water and get involved.
* Think about what you eat. A kilogram of meat requires 5 to 20 times more water to produce than is used to produce a kilogram of cereal. The average North-American uses 5,000 liters/day to feed itself; with half going to meat production alone. Eating a hamburger is equal to a two and half hour shower!
* Install a water saving toilet. Non-efficient toilets use nearly one-third of a home's total water consumption. A new toilet could cut up to 45,000 liters of water use per year.
* Use environmentally friendly hygiene and cleaning products. It will help keep water supplies cleaner.
* Bottled water can cost up to 10,000 times more than tap water. Annually, $100 billion is spent on bottled water around the globe. Just a quarter of that amount would provide access to safe drinking water to the whole planet.
* It takes 10 liters of water to make a sheet of paper. The pulp and paper industry is the third largest water polluter, producing over 100,000 tons of toxic refuse each year. Use both sides of a piece of paper or think before printing emails and other documents.

Today, there are over 50,000 people signed up to make a difference with ONE DROP.

“Today, I continue to dream of a fairer, more just world - a world where every human being has access to clean water and can live in dignity and health. The wildest dreams can come true when we all invest our energy, willpower and creativity. One drop at a time, one step at a time, we can do it. We can create a ripple effect,” said Laliberté.

What the Drop of Water Had to Say
a fable by Yann Martel

Montreal

Sun and Moon were arguing, again.

Brother and sister, they’d wandered the Universe

and found in this corner a good home.

Sun adored being the star of the show,

so many admiring planets spinning in his orbit.

Moon, more modest, was drawn to Earth.

Now Moon was looking at her brother glumly.

“What’s the matter?” asked Sun.

“My planet is drying up,” replied Moon.

“Earth, that speck of dirt? Why do you care?”

“Because it’s my garden. I love Earth,” Moon pouted,

as she slid into a lunar eclipse so she wouldn’t have to see her brother.